Multicolour Confusion

ajordison · Post by **ajordison** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 4:09 am

A CBM prg Studio user has commented that the colours in the screen designer are wrong. I don't mean the rgb values (I know they're wrong!) but the number of colours. Here's part of his email:

...multicolor mode on the VIC is cell-by-cell (rather than on the C64 where it's an all-or-nothing setting for the whole screen). It would be nice, if the higher 8 colors are ever implemented, to be able to choose multicolor mode for a given cell in your screen editor.

What does he mean by the 'extra' colours? Does the VIC have more colours available in multicolour mode?

TBCVIC · Post by **TBCVIC** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 5:54 am

You mean higher 8 colors? The background color and the auxiliary color used in multicolor mode have 16 different colors, yes.
Black, White, Red, Cyan, Magenta, Green, Blue, Yellow
Orange, Light Orange, Pink, Light Cyan, Light Magenta, Light Green, Light Blue, Light Yellow

GreyGhost · Post by **GreyGhost** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 7:40 am

I'm not sure exactly what you need, but on the Vic 20 in multi color mode screen(0-15), border(0-7) and Aux.(0-15) color are used for the entire screen(assuming no raster splits are involved). Character color(0-7) is set on a char cell by char cell basis. And multicolor and hires is also set cell by cell. I'm sure all of you guys know this stuff.

As far as "extra" colors, I have no idea, unless he means having the correct colors to choose from.

I hope this helps a little.

Later,

ajordison · Post by **ajordison** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 12:56 pm

GreyGhost wrote:As far as "extra" colors, I have no idea, unless he means having the correct colors to choose from

But what about the colours mentioned in TBCVIC's post? I'll admit I'm stumped, I thought the vic only had 8 colours?

TBCVIC · Post by **TBCVIC** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 1:30 pm

Nope, the Vic has 16 colors.

Here some docs: http://www.organ.su.se/ola/bookmarks/6561d.txt

ajordison · Post by **ajordison** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 1:56 pm

Thanks for clearing that up then! So I take it that the 'extra' colours are only available in multicolour mode?

RJBowman · Post by **RJBowman** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 4:34 pm

The upper eight colors are available in regular mode only as the screen (background) color.

ajordison · Post by **ajordison** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 11:07 am

RJBowman wrote:The upper eight colors are available in regular mode only as the screen (background) color.

OK thanks, I'll try it out in VICE.

RJBowman · Post by **RJBowman** » Wed Aug 22, 2012 9:35 pm

If you really need to display a full-resolution shape in one of the upper-eight colors, you could define it as a negative image, which, in effect, would give you one foreground color for the entire screen, and a different background color for each character. If you are using raster splits, or are mixing regular and multi-color graphics, this might not be a limiting as it first seems.